Winter Wonderland
by genies
Summary: Rowena takes a walk to calm herself. It ends up not being calming at all.


**Written for Clover (prompts: Rowena/Salazar, snowman, "Did you really...")**

 **Written for the September event at Hogwarts (prompts: striped scarf, "** **"You just suck the fun out of everything." / "I do not!" / "Fun-sucker.")**

 **Written for the Crystal, Gemstones & Astrology challenge at HPFC (prompt: write about the jokey, comical friend. (600-2,500 words))**

 **Written for Challenges by the Dozen at Caesar's Palace (prompt: write about a minor character).**

 **WC: 761**

* * *

Rowena shivered and pulled her striped scarf tighter around her neck. Helga, her longtime roommate who also happened to act like a second mother, had already scolded her yesterday for insisting on taking a walk every day in this weather, but Rowena didn't listen.

After all, she was just walking around the university campus in broad daylight. It wasn't like she was going to get frostbite or die of hypothermia.

"It's so bad for your skin to be out in this kind of weather!" Helga had said with a sigh. "You need moisturizer."

"I need a moment's peace," Rowena had grumbled, though she had done so with a smile. Helga's worrying was sometimes endearing.

"You can't have that inside? In a library or something?"

"I'd have to walk to the library, anyway."

"Ro," Helga had said sternly, "it is twelve degrees outside."

"Did you really think that would stop me?"

Now that Rowena was at least a mile down the street (she'd finally reached the end of the endless line of frat and sorority houses and was nearing the football stadium), she really wished she hadn't been so stubborn. Her lips were about to fall off, and her feet were cold from constantly trudging through the snow.

"Rowena," she chided, "you are a Northerner, born and bred. This is nothing."

She buried her head further into her scarf and continued walking, shoving her hands into her pockets. Damn, she should have bought pocket warmers when she last visited CVS.

Rowena couldn't really hear anything as she turned around to head back to her dorm, since her coat hat was pulled snugly around her head, but above the sound of her own breathing she heard the whooping from a few meters away. What other dumb kid was out in this weather? And why was he so happy about it?

She turned her neck stiffly to get a glimpse. A young man was building a snowman and had just placed the finishing touches on it. Rowena squinted. Ah, it was Salazar.

She snorted. Salazar had never lived in the north before, and he was still enchanted by snow. Rowena almost didn't want him to start to hate the winter weather, because then he would complain, and oh boy, could he complain.

They had immediately struck a friendship in European history seminar over the solidarity that forms between two kids who have weird names. Rowena approved of his way of icily debating. Little did she know at the time that he was infamous for pranking (particularly his friend Godric. Godric had a lot of bitter stories to tell involving pranks with him.) and telling jokes with such a straight face that Rowena couldn't discern them from the truth.

Once, as Rowena and the rest of the crew had been lounging at a picnic table, Godric and Salazar were arguing about whether or not his last prank had gone too far.

"Guys," she'd said, a bit tiredly, "what about this novel idea? No pranks?"

Godric had turned on her in utter disbelief. "You just suck the fun out of everything, don't you?"

"I do not!"

Salazar nodded in agreement. "Fun-sucker."

"Ro has a point," Helga said, still mostly paying attention to the squirrel that she was feeding.

"Stop feeding the animals," Rowena whispered to her. "It's bad for them to lose their fear of humans."

Salazar overheard. " _See_."

Rowena never would have guessed that this serious kid could be so rowdy outside of the classroom. By the time she found out, she was too deep in to just back out of the friendship (and really, she didn't have that many friends), so she learned to put up with him.

When Salazar turned her way and cocked his head as he tried to see if he recognized her, Rowena quickly jerked her head back ahead to face the sidewalk. If she knew Salazar at all, he would try to start a snowball fight. And if she knew herself at all, she wouldn't be able to resist throwing something back to save her pride.

Knowing her athletic skills, Rowena was over one hundred percent sure she would lose.

She picked up her pace, her windbreaker pants crinkling between her legs unpleasantly. There were only a few paces left til she could turn the corner and escape this catastrophe waiting to happen.

"Rowena!" he hollered.

Dammit. Rowena turned around. "Y-"

She quite literally ate her words as a snowball slammed into her mouth. Spluttering, she vowed to not go walk this way for the rest of the winter.


End file.
